HD DVD Version of Transformers sells big

Paramount announced that the Transformers HD DVD version that was released last week has sold a record 190,000 copies. Transformers has become the best selling DVD this year, selling a record 4.5 million copies on the first day of release, topping out at a staggering 8.3 million copies in the standard DVD format at the end of the first week of sales.

Due to the exclusive agreement with Paramount, Blu-ray owners were left out in the cold as Transformers was available exclusively in the HD DVD format only. One has to wonder what the numbers for hi-def discs would have been if Paramount would have elected to release Transformers in Blu-ray as well as HD DVD.

It seems as if Transformers director Michael Bay continues to stir the pot with his comments that he believes that Blu-ray will win out in the HD format war and that the lack of a common HD disc platform is short-sighted.

While the aggressive pricing of HD DVD players should be very dominant this holiday season, it seems that many people continue to think that Sony will make a big move before the holiday season. Blu-ray owners who lost out on Transformers due to the format war may be upset, but how many times have HD DVD owners lost out on titles that were Blu-ray only exclusives? It seems to us that until the format war ends, turn about will be fair play.